Societal Expectations of Women
So besides being consistently compared to these other "beauty" icons and getting criticized by others for not living up to those standards, the idea of "beauty" in and of itself ultimately consumes women who become crushed under that pressure. This burden that has been placed on modern women eats away at them any time they look into the mirror since they are constantly thinking about that one particular "American Dream" of a woman and how they wished they looked more like them. Most advertisements play up on this as well. Not only is male attention captured when an attractive female is displayed in an advertisement, but female attention is attracted as well, however in a completely different way.
It is always somewhat awkward when that kind of moment comes about. For example, I'll be sitting with my boyfriend watching T.V. and a commercial comes on displaying an attractive woman. The camera starts at her stiletto heels and slowly pans up as the audience begins to see her toned legs that show from her shortly cut dress. Then the camera continues higher, to her perfectly perky and endowed chest (my main issue with most women on advertisements), then her full, flowing hair, and her face. When the camera finally reaches her perfectly air-brushed face, her mouth is open and then the audience sees that she is about to eat a cheeseburger. Then there's of course the semi-awkward silence between my boyfriend and I. He's probably not necessarily thinking anything specific about the woman on T.V. other than the fact that she is stereotypically attractive. I, on the other hand, wanted to curl up into a ball and sink as far down into the couch as I could. I felt embarrassed, almost, for looking how I do and felt as though I wasn't good enough because I didn't look as beautiful as Miss Alabama did in her Hardee's commercial. I'm honestly cringing as I about to post the picture of her onto this blog site... but here it is:
My boyfriend hadn't expressed any sort of interest, probably out of consideration, but even so, then why does this type of advertisement get under my skin so badly? Naomi Wolf states that "the qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance. Competition between women has been made part of the myth so that women will be divided from one another," (Wolf 13-14). This certainly makes sense since our mainstream society is obsessed with sex and images of people who can be associated with sex. The main issue I think I had with it is the element of desire that the advertisement tries to create while using the female as a tool. Unfortunately that's all they see her as, and same with anyone who is watching the commercial, but it will always rattle even the most confident female's ego, especially if it occurs while she's with her significant other.
As for keeping women apart, beauty culture sure does an excellent job. Wolf also stated that beauty is similar to that of a currency system for women, that men have assigned to us. She claims that "like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance in tact. In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves," (Wolf 12). Unfortunately since these types of situations occur fairly frequently, at least in my paranoid and insecure mind, a woman can't help it but feel as though she has lost some sort of competition when another woman is viewed as "more beautiful" than her, even though the truth is that she is only beautiful in her own way (but that phrase doesn't make me feel any better about the situation). It certainly allows for men to continue to hold the power of deciding what is beautiful and what isn't by allowing for other women who don't fit the picture-perfect standard to become beaten down to the point of feeling as though they are lucky if someone tells them that they are beautiful. However, it should be the complete opposite; women should not feel lucky, they should be responding with, "I know."
Above is a video on Jean Kilbourne and her input on beauty in the media and how it provides a negative affect on women throughout the world. She describes the process in which women absorb the ideas of flawless beauty and become upset, frustrated, and in some cases depressed, when we are unable to obtain it.
These comparisons of beauty lead to a large amount of women who develop all sorts of eating disorders or even developing anxiety of not being beautiful enough. Susan Bordo states that "the thousands of slender girls and women who strive to embody these images and who in that service suffer from eating disorders, exercise compulsions, and continual self-scrutiny and self-castigation are anything but the "masters" of their lives," (Gilbert 755). When women are consumed by the beauty ideal that they believe they need to be living up to, they become obsessed with trying to fulfill it any way they can. When they do not reach the standards that they want to be at (which they never will because there will always be a new ad on television with a woman with a more appealing bosom or derriere) they become depressed and feel as though since they are not up to society's standards of beauty, they are worthless. However, it then becomes a vicious cycle of constantly trying to make improvements on themselves which causes them to lose control of what their main focuses in life should really be. Bordo offers reassurance to women who experience this by continuing with "popular representations, as we have seen, may forcefully employ the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, "having it all." Yet female bodies, pursuing these ideals, may find themselves as distracted, depressed, and physically ill as female bodies in the nineteenth century were made when pursuing a feminine ideal of dependency, domesticity, and delicacy," (Gilbert 756). It makes no sense for women to be basically killing themselves in order to, ironically enough, feel better about themselves, yet every single one of us does it to some extent. All of us fearing the idea of being unappealing to any sort of individual we wish to attract and not seeming good enough for them to be with.
Women are constantly told by the media that we need to change things about ourselves. We need to lose weight, clear up our skin, put on makeup, de-frizz our hair, put on a push up bra, or wear shoes that tone your glutes; and that fulfilling all of these things will make us "happy." It makes me feel better as a female who constantly is comparing myself to these unattainable standards (even though I know that they are unattainable) that I am not alone in feeling this way. In order for the beauty myth to be altered, media itself needs to change the way in which it portrays women, both as sex symbols and also as life-sized barbie dolls. However, a lot of the body image expectations had begun arising through the pornography industry and how they display women's bodies; but more on that to come in the next post!
Sincerely,
Samantha
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